Monthly Archives: June 2013

Hello again. It is that lovely time where we again show off some of our first game, This Is My Quest. If you haven’t been following up to this point, we have shown off characters and tiles. If you thought we were just making a simple puzzle game, this post might surprise you. We’re going on an adventure!

I won’t completely spoil the game, suffice to say you will be adventuring across unique levels including (but not limited to!) Spanish plains, caves, and through the streets of Old Madrid. We decided to put together a basic flythrough of our Old Madrid level. Note: This is a work in progress, yadda yadda yadda.

How do we make a level like this? Well, we actually lay it out in numerous layers that can scroll at different speeds with various, seamless art assets. This level (so far) consists of six different layers and twenty-seven pieces of art. For example, here is one of the pieces used on the city wall.

We have over five pieces of wall like this that we use. This allows us to add some variation to the level and avoid a bland, repetitive background.

Right now we have six levels being made, each with a unique look and feel. I can’t wait to get this thing into people’s hands. It’s going to be a blast!

I have not a host of words for you today. That is, of course, unless you abide by the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. If you subscribe to that, well then maybe I do have a few choice words from another artist we’re working with, Ian Sean Gibson.

It’s Friday night afternoon. Everything is all right. We’re working on This is My Quest, our puzzle adventure game coming to iOS, Ouya, and PC. How are we doing it?

We’re a small team. You’ve read (or are now reading) my small musings. You may know our other main player, Zeb West. You have seen art from Devin Jenkins and Zach Taylor. As a small team, we have two main resources and we’re short on both: time and money. To save a little bit of each, we’ve decided on using Unity for our first game. Unity is great for numerous reasons, but here are the biggest: I hate writing rendering code, the toolset is mature enough to let people work immediately, and it is a great value as far as licensed engines are concerned. Also, I really hate writing renderers. I don’t know if I made that clear enough. It has been delightful to hit the ground running at a point where Zeb can drop new tiles into the game with ease. Plus, since Unity compiles to so many platforms, it will be much easier to put the game where as many people can get it as possible. In fact, one of the great things about Unity is that we can create a web build to get feedback on the game.

For code, we’re using C# since it one of those supported by Unity and I am already intimately familiar with the lexicon. We’re controlling this source using git. (Sorry, Perforce.) git is a distributed version system and while learning it may be tough at first, it is quite lovely once you become familiar with it. (Zeb pushes and pulls like a pro now!) To ensure we have the game somewhere other than our machines, we host git on unfuddle. Although unfuddle also includes a wiki and project management systems, we still use a simple list in trello to track our progress. Again, small team.

Small, remote team, in fact. We are “located” in Austin, but are getting help from California, Michigan, and the UK. Google Hangout has been our primary method of meeting and communicating. In fact, this post is seeming a bit dry, so here is a picture of my office today.

It is nice to be working remote, but it definitely has a unique set of challenges. Direct collaboration is a little bit harder. Screenshare helps, but does not quite do justice in replacing seat next to seat feedback and iteration sessions. Despite that, I think the game is coming along well. I can’t wait to start throwing out some screenshots and let people get their hands on it.